White women assuming sexual power over black men is not a new story, says Robert Reece, of news that Danny Brown received unwanted oral sex on stage.
In news that didn’t make the headlines, a few weeks ago, on April 26, Detroit based rapper Danny Brown received unwanted oral sex on stage while on tour in Minneapolis. According to reports (and some stuff you can kinda make out in this camera-phone video), this young white woman jumped on stage while Brown was rapping, pulled his penis from his pants, and began to give him oral sex on the stage in the middle of this show. He didn’t stop the show; he continued rapping, though he eventually pulled away. Though he hasn’t released a statement, and almost certainly won’t, this is clearly an instance of sexual coercion. But, as a rapper, with some of the typical misogynist lyrics and a hypermasculine image to maintain, he will likely internalize the trauma of this incident, and this faceless white woman will fade away quietly into the night unscathed, while debates ensue about whether Brown actually wanted this oral sex.
This is an all-too-familiar narrative when black bodies are claimed sexually by white people itching to sample the taboo that is feral black sexuality. Our penises are unyielding ; our vaginas are cavernous. Both are insatiable, and eternally available to those brave enough to risk falling victim to our savage black genitalia. This alleged insatiability provided the impetus for the wives of slave owners to abuse black women slaves in retaliation for their husband’s infidelity (i.e. rape of black women), justified the murder of black men for consensual relationships with white women, and excused (and continues to ignore) a largely unexplored area of history: the sexual assault of black male slaves by white women.
Historian Thomas Foster dives into this latter concept in a 2011 article in The Journal of the History of Sexuality. Though these antebellum relationships between black male slaves and white women were inherently relationships of extreme power differences even if they were consensual, Foster cites cases where black men were explicitly coerced into sexual activity by white women. Black male slaves could be ordered to have sex with white women and threatened with a trip to the auction block or physical terror unless they complied, and white women made full use of their standing in selecting their partners to ensure discretion and domination as in the following example:
…the [white] woman preyed on more than one man… [she] “did not make advances . . . to her father’s more intelligent servants” but singled out for sexual assault instead a man “over whom her authority could be exercised with less fear of exposure” because he was so traumatized. Such a man, it is suggested, had been terrorized into submission on the plantation, and she took advantage of his state of mind to force herself upon him—with the threat of additional punishment if he did not accept her assault and if he did not keep it clandestine. (p. 462)
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This power over male slaves, and eventually black freed men, extended beyond the women of slave owning families. White women could manipulate white men’s fear of untamed black male sexuality and use it to their advantage in pursuing relationships with black men by threatening to claim they were raped if the man refused her advances or revealed them to the public. A rape claim, especially by a woman of supposed “good character and moral standing,” would mean certain mutilation and perhaps death of the accused black man.
Note: This doesn’t discount the history of “immoral” white women also falling victim to the violence of white men for interracial liaisons. The Klan, and other white supremacist groups and random mobs of white men, would also occasionally inflict violence upon white women who slept with black men when the woman had a reputation for being promiscuous. Also, not all black men accused of rape by white women were innocent; we know that is not the case.
Unfortunately, over the years, black men have begun to embrace this image of wild sexuality, hoping that we can protect ourselves from assault and objectification by reclaiming the very image of beastliness and danger that whites used as justification for our enslavement and lynching. But this reclamation project is proving unsuccessful as our hypermasculine, hypersexual posturing only seems to make our bodies even more available. This hyper availability manifests in a variety of ways. At its least destructive, white women stare at my crotch as I walk across Duke’s campus. And at its most extreme, the hypermasculinity of Danny Brown emboldened this white woman to publically help herself to his body and avoid consequences. Also falling somewhere on the spectrum is Amanda Bynes’s assertion that she wants rapper Drake to murder her vagina.
In each case, there is no recourse for the powerless. I can’t yell at every white woman who ogles my zipper. Drake isn’t allowed to tell Amanda Bynes that he doesn’t want to murder her vagina (not without resorting to decrying her looks or sanity). And Danny Brown must be silent, and his assailant will probably go unpunished; he will almost certainly refuse to publicly identify as a victim, a stance that we must acknowledge, but he wouldn’t be the first sexual assault victim to downplay or completely ignore what appears to be his victimhood because of the stigma attached to being a victim, especially for men, especially for black men. The fact is, where the power and privilege of the combinations of gender and race are involved, our bodies are not always our own; they are constantly subject to the use of the powerful, in this case, white women. And though men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual assault, even against other men, Danny Browns are certainly more common than we think, and we can’t continue to ignore it. We have to deconstruct this hyperbolic image of black sexuality and hypermasculinity and take measures to remove the stigma of victimhood so that we can reduce instances of objectification and hold everyone accountable when he or she chooses to take steal the agency of another person.
Read more On Race and On Rape and Sexual Violence.
I honestly don’t understand people simetimes. Really. What kind of a person thinks it’s a fun idea to jump on a stage and give an unwanted BJ? That’s just insane. She should be prosecuted just as if a male jumped on stage and groped a female performer.
She wont, she’s far too oppressed for that.
@Sarah… It’s just like male teachers who are caught having sex with underage girls. They usually get an average of 10 yrs in the pen AND convicted sex offender status for life. Female teachers who commit the same transgression usually get about 2-5 years! Many even get some celebrity status too! I once dated a 27 year old woman after my divorce. She told me her high school guidance counselor (a 39 yr old woman) was having sex with several of the student athletes for years. She had one single requirement: a big d**k! Sexual assault is sexual assault, period.… Read more »
@Julia Byrd: I don’t have a problem with he fact that some white women sexually objectify men of color. The problem stems from the finger pointing and moral grandstanding so common to gender debate which only serves to keep real conversation from happening. Isn’t it a joke that, still, after all of this dialogue, that this conversation about sexual objectification has advanced so little?
There are no sexual groups that don’t sexually objectify.
I’m wondering if feminists are going to point this incident out as an example of Rape Culture (considering a woman mouth raped a man in front of an audience and walked away scott free), or give commentary on how it reveals Female Sexual Entitlement or Sexual Objectification By Women. I mean, she very clearly treated this man like an object to which she was entitled to force oral sex on. I’m certain that if a man had raped a woman in a similar fashion, in front of a live audience, feminists everywhere would be drawing broad, sweeping, scathing generalizations about… Read more »
I don’t know about “feminists” in general but I think almost all the women I know who call themselves feminists would ABSOLUTELY call this a part of “rape culture” because part of rape culture is believing that men can’t be raped, and also that all men just want sex from every one, indiscriminately. And that a ton of people say, “You’re gay if you don’t like a chick blowing you” is part of the idea that we think we can prescribe for others what their sexual consent should look like. All of that bullshit adds to rape culture, and that’s… Read more »
Agreed 100X.
Well I’ll just agree with Joanna and then also point out that there’s a Feministing article (that’s right…Feministing) which talks about how Danny Brown was assaulted, including in the title the term “rape culture.”
I appreciate the nod but at the same time I can’t help but notice the Alexandra jumping in fast to deny female privilege and making the “she’s so powerless she gets away with it” argument.
Again its good to see them acknowledge male victims but they still slide too close to giving female perps a free pass.
@Danny: Is it the celebrity aspect of this story that’s driving it? I mean, are we only interested in this story because he is a black rapper who got assaulted by a white female on stage? Would we be discussing this otherwise? Everyday, hundreds if not thousands of boy’s of all colors are assaulted and abused who are not famous. This situation lends itself to being discussed in the rarefied confines of sudo intellectual cyber space and we love it. We can discuss,ad nasuem, all of the finer points of gender relations, comments keep coming in, Facebook is lit up,… Read more »
“After all, part of the reason we have so much trouble imagining a woman assaulting a man is that we can’t break the assumption that masculinity equals aggression and power while femininity equals passivity and weakness. It’s not a woman’s privilege that allows her to get away with terrible violence like this, but that we can’t conceive of her holding any power at all.” This is what I mean about feminists arbitrarily assigning the term “privilege” to everything that affects men and arbitrarily assigning the term “oppression” to everything that affects women. If a man rapes a woman and gets… Read more »
What I have more trouble with is Alexandra later in a weekly summary post asks the question: “Are Danny Brown’s misogynistic lyrics relevant to the analysis of his alleged (by someone else) assault?” with a link to this: http://feministcurrent.com/7638/was-danny-brown-sexually-assaulted-on-stage/ I may well be that Alexandra disagrees with Meghan Murphy here, but asking that question and linking to that page without offering any opposing view leaves it difficult for me to ascertain exactly where Alexandra stands on the issue. Alexandra states in the Feministing article HeatherN linked to: It’s not a woman’s privilege that allows her to get away with terrible… Read more »
Being more free to yield your power “under the radar” so to speak because people can’t conceive that you have any power does seem like a privileged flip-side of the “women don’t have any power” notion.
Well to go off topic a bit:
“It’s not a man’s privilege that allows him to get away with not being an active parent like this, but that we can’t conceive of him being a capable parent at all”.
(I know that’s not a perfect translation but it sprung to mind.)
As much as sexual “entitlement” is discussed around here there is no one more sexual entitled than a white American female. Many believe themselves to be higher status than women of color, should have their pick of men, and who “believe their own hype” that men of color view them as a prize. Try being an ethnic minority in the US who turns down a white woman who is interested in you. My friends and I can tell you stories of women who go off the rails letting you know that “you’ll never do better”, “you can stay with your… Read more »
@ Jimbo…. “My friends and I can tell you stories of women who go off the rails letting you know that “you’ll never do better”, “you can stay with your trashy Latina”, or “how can you turn me down I’m so much better than who you’re dating now?” Agree 1000%. I experienced the very same from a white female co-worker several years ago. I actually thought highly of her. But, after my refusal to have sex with her, she broke off ALL contact. Btw, I was still married at the time, though it was really functionally done. I do not… Read more »
Hi and thanks for writing this. I got goosebumps reading it as I discover another deeper cut of shared humanity. To see what it is like from your side, to discover that we share discomfort about our conditioned place in society, even though the details of that may differ. I am with you brother on the deconstruction of labels, attitudes and assumptions that do nothing but keep our individual expression in chains. Because, under the cliche, is a very real, very direct, very distinct experience that our very being-ness is not subject to the outer shell we wear. How my… Read more »
Excellent Robert I’ve been a Danny Brown fan ever since I saw him play to 15 people in a dingy Detroit bar years ago. I’ve to reconcile his over the top misogynist lyrics with my own feminist ally type views. But when I heard about this incident I was surprised at how many people spoke as if those lyrics justified what to me is a blatant sexual assault. Nothing a person says should justify non-consensual sexual acts. Just like nothing someone wears should either. I even saw an article in the Minneapolis City Pages talking about the woman as if… Read more »
Great piece, and see how deep this goes Robert, despite it all you said near the end – “And though men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual assault, even against other men” and so hid female sexual violence and demonized male sexuality.
It’s also wrong according to latest stats. Majority of sexual abuse against adult men is perpetrated by women.
“And though men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual assault, even against other men,” Incorrect. Men are most likely the majority perpetrators of sexual assault, however, if you count rapes in prison, it is not beyond the realm of the possible for the majority of the perpetrators to be women. Om the other point of men being the main perpetrators of sexual assault against other men, that is patently incorrect. About 80% of the rapes of men are perpetrated by women, both inside (when considering only staff rapes about 50% of the perpetrators if you include male inmate on male… Read more »
@Mr.Reece: I am confused about something. You are a feminist if I recall correctly.If that is the case, certainly you must know that this type of article isn’t the sort of thing that feminists are usually interested. Especially white feminists. This isn’t an accident. Nor is it an accident that this sort information isn’t discussed or known. In fact, feminism has rewritten the very history you are attempting to illuminate. They have said that slave women and their Mistresses were sisters in arms, united against the evil of the patriarchy. What nonsense! The Mistresses were partners in slavery and were… Read more »
Mr. Reece, This is beyond brilliant. What a brave bold piece. May I retweet it ad nausem ? I have already started spreading it around. To be a black male in this culture is to be a being that is always available for anyone’s sexual advances. Many times, I have rebuffed advances because while there was an almost rabid fascination with my physicality there was no serious passion regarding my brilliant mind and love of thinking. Bravo. Keep ’em coming. They ain’t ready.. Shall we take over the world along with some amazing men that I’ve met on this site… Read more »
Thanks for reading. I’m glad you enjoyed it enough to share.
Taking over the world has always been on my to-do list. Count me in.
Robert Reece
What happened to the babies?
Women get pregnant. What happened to children born to slave owners daughters and wife?
Do know anything about that?
Varies across time and place. In most cases the kids took the status of the mother so babies born to white moms would be free.
In other places, if a white woman birthed the child of a slave, both she and the child would be enslaved for the duration of the father’s lifetime.
Thank you Robert.
insightful. I would like a source documenting that the sexual contact was unwanted.
Here is a piece by Brown’s best friend about the incident where she clearly says that it was unwanted. http://noisey.vice.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-this-whole-danny-brown-oral-sex-thing
This is a great contemporary piece on the victimization of Black men sexually by white women. Rape has continued to be defined with a heteronormativity that makes the white woman the assumed victim and the Black male the barbarous perpetrator. As I have mentioned on my radio show, the danger of this is that the copyright on “gender” that contemporary Black feminist, Black queer, and Black critical theory claim in this regard overlooks the history of Black men and boys being victims of sexual assault by the alleged (white) sisters of the feminist movement. The sexual victimization of Black men… Read more »
Attacked by a ninja BJ queen, who overcame security? Come on, it was part of the show…
What did the cops say?
However the stuff about antebellum women is interesting-” The Fall of the .house of Dixie” covers male owners with female slaves- but missed this…
I bet if he pushed her away then a lot of people would say he was violent, when what he was doing was defending himself. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Hi Robert
Danny Brown was raped.
Why not say as it is instead of wrapping in up in cotton?
It is our general policy to allow survivors to name what happened to them for themselves.
I think it’s clear Mr. Reece believes that Danny Brown was sexually assaulted, or raped. Mr. Reece is raising awareness, and that is a good thing.